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Over the past eighteen months, the staff and I at the National Archives have been working diligently to develop our next Strategic Plan. Many meetings, long conversations, Town Halls, thoughtful emails, and loads of feedback from staff and stakeholders have gone into the refinement of the strategy that will be the roadmap for our Agency through 2018. Along the way, I have encouraged staff to stretch their vision and to be bold.

Our Plan has four goals:

Make Access Happen:Increasingly this means digital, online access.

Connect with Customers:Wherever they are, however they want it.

Maximize NARA’s Value to the Nation:Through the use and reuse of our digital content.

Build Our Future through Our People:The most important goal of all.

Over the next couple of weeks I will be blogging on each of the goals to let you in on some of the ideas behind each of them. In the meantime, take a look at our new Strategic Plan.

3 Responses to “Being Bold!”

n said:

Digital access to records is important but with limited staff and resources, it is unrealistic to think that we can digitize everything. At most institutions, the partnerships include provisions to pay for the prep work that the records require. Why is this not the case here at NARA? Digitization is important, but the resources (especially manpower) need to be allocated for these initiatives.

If NARA is making plans for 2018 you should include the plan to declassify the remaining sealed JFK Assassination records by October 2017, as the JFK Act of 1992 requires, but at this point in time you can’t even say how many documents are still being legally withheld, how many have been destroyed, how many are missing and how many are being illegally withheld under the false presumptions of Not Believed Relevant and National Security.

The law is required to remain in force until the AOTUS notifies the Pres, Congress and the American people that the last JFK Assassination record has been released, an event that should occur on your watch in 2017.

The declassification of these records can be more easily accomplished by having the records re-included in the National Declassification Review process that has been used to declassify other historic records.

Thank you for your time and interest in this matter.
Bill Kelly

(March 27, 2014 at 4:29 pm)

nara9 said:

Why would “Make Access Happen” even be considered a “strategic goal”? I thought a 4-year goal is something strived for, in order to complement what the core mission of an institution is. What has NARA done and apparently done successfully up to this time, but ensure “access” to records – provided we have the resources (Staff) and materials (preservation containers, stack space, training etc) to adequately care for and describe the various record formats we provide to the public? Perhaps, we should focus on the fundmentals of archival administration first before investing heavily in mass digitization.

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